Poultry processing is an area in which microbiological control is of vital importance. By the very nature of the processing involved there are numerous opportunities for the poultry to be exposed to various pathogens in the form of mobile bacteria such as for example Escherichia coli, Salmonella enteritidis, Salmonella typhimurim, Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter coli, Campylobacter lari, and in the form of biofilms such as for example Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterococcus faecium, and Staphylococcus aureus. Handling, processing and consuming bacteria-infested poultry is to be minimized, if not avoided.
In recent years, new effective microbiocides for use in the processing of poultry for food have been discovered and described. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,908,636; 6,919,364; 6,986,910 and U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2006/0004072 A1.
In the processing of poultry for food, large quantities of water are necessarily used. Recycle of water in the processing is a way of reducing the amount of water used and the amount of wastewater produced. However, use of effective microbiocides in the processing operations gives rise to problems associated with treating wastewater in order to reduce its biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) prior to release to the environment. These problems result from the fact that in order to reduce the BOD, microorganisms are utilized in the wastewater to destroy various impurities including organic matter. Thus, the wastewater itself which contains biocidally-active residues from halogen-based microbiocides, especially bromine-based microbiocides, tends to inhibit the activity of such microorganisms because of the toxicity of these residues toward these microorganisms. Such microorganisms include for example, floc-forming organisms, saprophytes, predators, and nuisance organisms. See in this connection Grady and Lim, Biological Wastewater Treatment, Marcel Dekker Inc., Copyright, 1980, Chapter 7.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable if a practical, economically-feasible way could be found for reducing water consumption and discharge from operations in which poultry is processed for food while at the same time, reducing the toxicity of the biocidally-active residues resulting from use of a halogen-based microbiocide in such processing.